ELL Information Center

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ELL Information Center

The U.S. population has changed dramatically in the past three decades, as nearly 30 million immigrants, both authorized and unauthorized, have settled here seeking a better future for themselves and their children. Much attention has focused on proposed and actual change to immigration laws at the national and state levels.

A less studied, but perhaps vastly more important area of interest, is the effect immigration has on U.S. classrooms—where society’s response will determine the skills of the future U.S. workforce and the nation’s ability to remain competitive in a global economy.

Click on the map to access the interactive data tool.

For that reason, MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy has created the English Language Learner (ELL) Information Center, to provide informative fact sheets, maps, and state-level data resources that chronicle the demography and trends of immigrant families and their children.

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Recent Activity

This report examines existing collaborative teacher exchange programs some U.S. states and districts have established with Mexico and Spain, and identifies such programs as a relatively unexplored, yet promising strategy for alleviating endemic teacher shortages and meeting the needs of LEP students.

Funding for education in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has two primary objectives: 1) to help stimulate national economic recovery by providing jobs and building infrastructure in the state and local educational systems, and 2) to improve educational outcomes for children, particularly those most in need.

This report provides a demographic profile of adolescent limited English proficient students in the United States, examines how these students are faring on standardized tests, and breaks down the assessment data further for a comparison of 6th to 8th grade LEP students California, Colorado, Illinois, and North Carolina.

Securing the Future seeks to define what policymakers and scholars mean by integration while attempting to sketch the contours of U.S. integration policy. The volume reviews evidence of immigrants’ integration by examining the progress of the second generation, as well as trends in education, health, the workforce, and citizenship.

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ELLs in Context

In the first video, we discuss the distribution of ELLs across the country, their growth in enrollment, and more. In the second video, we examine key indicators of ELL students' performance on standardized tests, among other topics.

About the Project

The English Language Learner (ELL) Information Center examines the demography and trends of immigrant families and their children who are English Language Learners. The share of ELL students in K-12 schools in the United States increased by more than 50 percent between 1997-98 and 2007-08. While most states experienced growth in ELL enrollments, some states’ ELL enrollments decreased. The fact sheets, maps, and other resources offered here trace ELLs' growth, how they are faring in schools, and the policies that are directed at this population.